


Before the Morning Watch: One Vision and Five Futures

by Deastar



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Angst, Character of Color, Dark, Incest, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-28
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-06 16:30:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deastar/pseuds/Deastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morgana tells Merlin about waking up from a dream of a future in which she's pregnant. Each of the five parts posits a different father for Morgana's child, and the future that goes along with that possibility.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> All titles yanked from T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets." Other titles I considered (mostly while very sleep-deprived) included "Terrible Things Happened to Women in the Middle Ages," "Three Parts Morgana with a Sword, Two Parts Morgana Without a Sword," and "Five Ways Morgana LeFay Got Knocked Up." You have been warned. Thank you, thank you, thank you to my three wonderful betas: [](http://arlad.livejournal.com/profile)[**arlad**](http://arlad.livejournal.com/), [](http://anevivi.livejournal.com/profile)[**anevivi**](http://anevivi.livejournal.com/) and [](http://regonym.livejournal.com/profile)[**regonym**](http://regonym.livejournal.com/)!

_____________________________________________________________________________

_Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel_

_And piece together the past and the future,_

_Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception_

_The future futureless, before the morning watch_

             -T.S. Eliot, "The Dry Salvages," Four Quartets

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

Merlin is storming angrily through the castle on the way back to Gaius' chambers after another frustrating nighttime conversation with the dragon when he hears a woman crying. He approaches more carefully, and in a nook in the wall, he finds Morgana. She is sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, sobbing softly.

"Morgana?" he whispers. "Are you all right, my lady?"

"Oh!" she exclaims, and unfolds her legs, scrubbing a hand across her eyes. "It's nothing, really," she tells him unconvincingly, looking away.

Merlin sits on the floor at her feet, back braced against the opposite wall – it's a tight fit, but he's learned that you can't just plop yourself down next to a lady of the court, even if she is a friend.

"Was it a nightmare, my lady?"

"I… I don't know," Morgana says, which Merlin thinks is pretty strange. His expression must show it, because she gives him a watery laugh and says, "It was one of my true dreams, if that's what you mean. I simply mean that… I don't know if it was bad or not."

"Did it frighten you?"

"Yes." Morgana looks to the side, pensive. "But it's not a bad thing. Just… not at all what I was expecting, and… change is frightening."

"Morgana…" Merlin offers hesitantly, "If you want to tell someone about it, you can trust me. You know that."

"You'll think I'm going mad," Morgana warns, and Merlin laughs and says, "Not likely."

Morgana begins, "It was an odd dream, very odd because… I often have true dreams, but they're dreams of things… a week in the future. A month at most."

"How do you know this one was from farther out?" Merlin asks, and he gets another wry laugh from Morgana.

"Well, Merlin, it must be at least nine months in the future, unless there are greater miracles than I know of."

Merlin puzzles over that one for a minute, then gasps. "You mean you're going to be with child!" he exclaims, and Morgana glares.

"Perhaps you could say that a little bit louder, Merlin."

"Sorry," Merlin says, more quietly. "But that's what you saw, isn't it? Sometime in the future."

"Yes." Morgana huffs out a breath. "I don't know why I was so frightened. I didn't notice anything else, I was so panicked – not even what I was wearing—"

"Oh, yes," Merlin says, with mock gravity, "that's very important."

"Shut up, Merlin."

"Shutting up," Merlin responds obediently.

"I just—" She folds her arms around herself as if she is cold. "I don't understand it. I just have this feeling, and I can't explain it: this feeling that there's… that something is going to happen, something much larger and more important than just me, and that this is part of it. I feel like destiny is going to come crashing down on me, Merlin. I don't know why I'm afraid, but I am."

"You're the strongest person I know," Merlin says firmly. "Whatever is about to come crashing down, you'll bear up. I know it. Also," he adds, "destiny is… pardon my language, my lady, but destiny is a complete crock. Trust me. I know all about destiny."

Morgana stares at him, and slowly a smile comes across her face. "There's something about you, Merlin," she muses, and Merlin smiles.

"You're not the first to say that."

Quiet hangs around them, soft and comfortable, and Merlin enjoys the warmth of Morgana's trust.

"I'm magic, you know," he confesses suddenly, and Morgana smiles again.

"I think I did know," she says thoughtfully. "Just in the back of my mind. I'm glad you told me."

"Yeah, well…" Merlin thinks about the dragon calling Morgana a witch and telling him to keep his mouth shut. He looks up at Morgana, whose eyes are watery and whose hair is tangled – she doesn't look like a witch to him. "Destiny is a crock," he says decisively.

Morgana laughs quietly and rises from her seat on the bench.

"Will you be all right tonight?" Merlin asks anxiously, but Morgana nods.

"Yes, thank you. And… thank you for listening."

"Any time, my lady," Merlin says honestly, before they turn their separate ways to find their beds before the morning watch.


	2. 1. "Who then devised the torment? Love." - Uther

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Pendragons destroy Morgana's world. She returns the favor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING for major character death and quasi-incest.

Morgana’s voice is gone. She had screamed it away as Gwen burned.

The king sends Arthur with the keys to unlock the chains that have scraped her wrists and ankles bloody.

“I am so sorry, Morgana,” he murmurs as the manacles fall away from her red wrists.

Morgana’s voice is gone, so she does not tell him that she does not forgive him, but she puts it in her eyes. She knows he tried to intervene, tried to reason with Uther, even tried to help Gwen escape from the dungeons – but when his own soldiers tied Gwen to a stake in the square and lit the hem of her faded red dress on fire, he had stood by and watched. For all of his poorly-hidden longing and his pathetic sighs, he had stood by while Gwen screamed. She hates him.

“You and I both know that Guinevere was no witch. I will see to it that she receives a proper burial,” he says stiffly – Morgana strikes him across the face, leaving bloody smears on his cheek.

Turning her back on him, she walks across the square to the stake, and the pitiful pile beneath it. She sinks to her knees and begins sifting through the ashes. They stick to her open wounds, caking thick and grey in her blood, but she ignores them. There is a bit of bone, perhaps from a finger – there is a longer one, the length of a forearm. She sets the bones on her skirt, but soon there are too many, and her skirt will never be able to hold them all. Morgana begins to weep.

Someone kneels beside her – it is Merlin, holding a bag.

“I thought you might…” he begins hesitantly. She cannot bring herself to thank him, but she takes the bag and slowly fills it with all the bones that she can find. Some of them have been destroyed by the heat, but enough remain that, if Morgana were more skilled at magic than she is now, she might entertain dark thoughts of re-animating the skeleton. As it is, her thoughts bend down another path.

When she is finished with the bones, Merlin gently rests a hand on her shoulder, and says, “Let me clean those out for you,” gesturing at her wrists. Docilely, she follows him into Gaius’ rooms, where he painfully rinses them clean, then bandages all of her wounds. They are substantial – Morgana had injured two of the soldiers who came to take her to the execution, and had not stopped fighting her bonds until all hope was gone.

“I’m so sorry,” he tells her, just like Arthur, but Merlin, she can imagine forgiving.

“You could not have saved her,” she scrapes out through her raw throat, barely intelligible – for some reason, her words make him flinch.

That night, she bathes and scents herself. She dresses in the deep green gown that she knows Uther likes best, and makes an attempt at putting her hair in some semblance of order. Her chambers are mortally empty.

In the dark, with a candle in her hand, she makes her way to Uther’s rooms. When he opens the door and sees her there, he looks almost frightened. Her voice is still too ragged to allow her to speak above a whisper – Morgana does not object. She knows it makes her sound submissive.

“May I come in, my lord?”

“Of course,” he says, gesturing her toward his sitting room, but she glides past him into his bedchamber. When he looks at her there, no more than four feet from his bed, she knows she has won, for the look in his eyes tells her that he has seen her in this room before, but only in his hopes, his fantasies.

“I am so sorry, Morgana,” he says, and she is dreadfully tired of hearing men tell her that.

“I know you are, my lord,” she says, ducking her head. “I know how much you care for me. I know how it distresses you to cause me pain. I know that you would not have chosen this course if there was any other way.”

“Of course not,” he says, in a rush, “and you must know that if there is anything that I can do to ease your suffering – I, too, have been betrayed, by magic-users who I thought my friends and allies, I know, it is like a cold wind through the heart—”

“Yes,” Morgana murmurs, wrapping her arms close around herself as if she is chilled, stroking her hands up and down her arms. “Yes, it is… cold, so cold. As if I shall never be warm again.” That, and two steps toward him, is all that it takes. He takes her into his arms – for warmth, purely for warmth, of course, and she can feel his guilt and his temptation in the tight line of his muscles. She meets his embrace with one of her own, and nestles her head below his chin, as she has done for many years.

“You would ease my suffering, my lord,” she whispers.

“Yes,” he replies, his voice hoarse.

“Yes,” she repeats meaninglessly, and turns her face to press the barest kiss against his pulse. His reaction is immediate and powerful – he freezes, and his breathing quickens, and his arms grow rigid, as if he can make himself neither push her away, nor draw her close.

“My lord,” she reproaches him, twisting so that the wide neckline of her dress slips off of one perfect, bare shoulder, “you would not leave me uncomforted in my grief… would you, my lord?”

Uther’s exhalation shakes against the side of her face.

“Comfort?” he asks, seeking a pretty word to put on this. She lets him have it.

“Comfort,” she repeats soothingly, and unclasps his cloak, letting it fall to the ground behind him with a velvet thump.

It is worse than she had imagined it would be – that her skin would shrink at his touch, she had predicted, but what shreds her spirit is the feeling that, with each touch, he is erasing Gwen’s own touch from Morgana’s skin. He sweeps a hand down the upper slope of her breast, and it feels as if Gwen’s cheek had never lain there; he cups a hand over her mound, and Gwen is no longer the only person to know those secret parts. Only the vision, the vision of which she had told Merlin, gives her the strength to endure it and pretend to enjoy it – only knowing that she will have to do this just once makes it even slightly bearable.

When it is over, he looks down at her face and strokes a finger down her cheek. The shame in his eyes is like a great beast curling around itself, preparing a lair in which it will live forever.

“Your father…” he begins, but Morgana does not allow him to purge his guilt by confessing it.

“You are my father now, my lord,” she tells him, and he looks as if he might be sick.

Perhaps she should stay, to perfect the illusion, but her skin rebels at the thought. She dresses in silence and returns to her own empty chambers and empty bed, where she lays her head down on a pillow that does not smell like Gwen, and sleeps in her dress, the way Gwen would never have let her, and lets hate build in her deepest self in a way that would have broken Gwen’s heart to see.

 

~*~

 

It is like magic, to see how one night has aged Uther Pendragon. He can barely look at her, let alone speak to her, and the lines in his face seem to have deepened overnight. For the first time, he looks like the old man he is.

As a gift that Morgana had not thought to arrange, a serving girl had seen her leaving Uther’s chambers, looking disheveled and horrified, on the night after he had killed her best friend – there is not a soul in Camelot who believes that she went to him willingly. His reputation is in tatters, and those who do not believe it at first are at least capable of simple mathematics when Morgana’s belly begins to swell, four months later. Uther does not ask her if the child is his – then again, he does not speak to her at all, these days.

Arthur does ask, and she tells him that much of the truth. He sinks into his chair and sits silently for a long moment, looking almost as old as his father. Then he sinks further, bending a knee at her feet, and asks her if she would do him the very great honor of being his wife.

He is a good man, and at times, wonderfully strong and noble. At moments like this, Morgana regrets the ways that she will make him suffer.

She accepts his proposal. The wedding is somewhat leeched of the joy that it would usually possess, given that every one of the attendees is perfectly aware that Arthur is marrying Morgana in the interests of legitimizing his father’s bastard child, which was begot on a girl who is practically his daughter, very possibly against her will. They make a handsome couple. Uther looks like a skeleton.

When Morgana’s little girl is born, Arthur looks down on her in her cradle with so much love that Morgana almost forgives him.

“For a name…” he begins, hesitant. “I thought, perhaps, Guinevere—”

“No!” Morgana calms herself. “That is, no, my lord, if you please.”

“Of course,” Arthur says stiffly. “I apologize.”

“It’s all right. I know you meant well by it.” Morgana looks down at her pretty child, Arthur’s half-sister. “Morgause is an old family name, from my mother’s people – do you think it is pretty?”

“As pretty as she is,” Arthur replies softly, playing with the baby’s tiny fingers, marveling as they close around his thumb. “Lady Morgause,” he pronounces. “I like it very much.”

“Then Morgause she shall be,” Morgana says.

When Morgause is presented to the people, in the same square where Gwen was burned, less than a year ago, they cheer, but not as loud as they might – they know the rotten core at the heart of this beautiful family, Arthur’s lovely young bride and their lovely baby girl. Arthur, for his own part, loves Morgause as if she were his own daughter, and treats Morgana with the kind of gentle deference due to widows. He does not presume upon her bed or her company. Still, they live together in the same suite of rooms – although with separate bedrooms – and share a child, and a kingdom. He learns to smile in front of her again, and she pushes him to become his best self just as she used to do – though it is no more than a game now, now that she knows the true mettle of Arthur’s failed courage. In time, he grows to believe he loves her. She never makes that mistake.

 

~*~

 

It takes King Uther Pendragon four long years to die. His hair turns grey, then falls out; his muscle withers; Gaius, his only true friend, passes away; and his enemies circle closer, and grow more daring. The magical attacks, especially, grow, and when Uther finally gasps his last, under Morgana’s cold, impatient eye, three things of note come to pass.

First, Arthur becomes King, and Morgana Queen. The people are relieved – Uther’s reputation had only rotted further under the weight of his obvious guilt and shame, and toward the end, his subjects had whispered that he might very well be mad.

Second, Arthur repeals the ban on magic, and appoints Merlin his Court Sorcerer.

Morgana keeps her eyes low to the floor while she praises Arthur’s wisdom and tolerance. If he had discovered his principles back when it still mattered, Gwen would not have been murdered. Of Merlin, she is wary. It is too soon to see what he will become.

Third, a man and a boy come to Camelot. Lancelot comes directly to Morgana, the druid boy Mordred in tow, and tells her that the druids paid him to escort the boy to Camelot as soon as word of Uther’s death was confirmed.

“I was happy to do it,” Lancelot says, eagerly. “Your maid, Guinevere – when may I see her?”

“She is dead,” Morgana tells him – at first, she can see that he does not believe her, but as the truth sinks through his skin, he begins to weep unashamedly, with great heaving sobs. The tears run down his cheeks as Morgana rushes to embrace him. “I loved her!” he cries, and Morgana murmurs, “I know, I know.”

When he collects himself, Morgana smiles at him and asks him to come and visit her, and share stories of Gwen – there is no one else at Camelot who truly understands. He vows that he will return the very next day, and she knows that he will – the next day, and the next, and the next, and before long, he will come to visit her at night. He is an honorable man, and he will love Arthur for making him a knight now, despite his common parentage – but his years of hardship and his broken heart have made him… flexible. Morgana understands him well.

“The Pendragons killed her,” Mordred says solemnly, when Lancelot has left. “Like they killed my father, and her father. And your father.”

“Yes.” Although Mordred is only twelve years old, she does not doubt why he is here. “Your people have sent you to me.”

“To be your instrument. Emrys is strong, and his love for the new king cannot be broken. Alone, either of us would fail.”

“Then it is good that we have each other.”

 

~*~

 

By the time Arthur stands beaten and bloodstained on the field at Camlann, Mordred is a strapping youth, and the King’s adopted heir. He will be betrothed to Morgause and become king when Arthur is dead, which Morgana anticipates will be in no more than a few minutes. Lancelot was exiled months ago for the crime of reminding Arthur that his marriage is and has always been loveless. His exile has divided the knights, while Morgana’s adultery has weakened Arthur in the eyes of his people. Arthur’s broken heart has made him slow on the battlefield. It is over.

As Morgana lifts her blade for the killing blow, everything suddenly stops, as if she is outside of time, and when she turns to look over her shoulder, Merlin is there.

“Why, Morgana?” he asks, and his eyes are sad and dark.

“The Pendragons burned everything I cared for to ashes,” Morgana says bitterly, not expecting him to understand. “They smashed my whole world into nothing. It is only natural to want to return the favor.”

“Gwen would not have wanted you to do this.”

“Then it’s just as well she’s not here to see it,” Morgana says sharply.

_Mother?_ Morgause’s voice sounds in Morgana’s head – a trick that Mordred taught her. _I want to sleep. I can’t sleep until Father tells me a story. When will Father return to tell me a story?_

“I know Gwen was your whole world,” Merlin says, resigned but pleading. “But, please, can’t you see that Arthur is mine? He is everything to me. Please, just let me take him from here. You’ll never have to see us again.”

_Mother… I had such terrible dreams last night. Please, I just want a story._

Morgana looks around at the bodies strewn on the ground – at the man on his knees before her who has already given her so much of his life: a good man, a good father, a good king. He might have even been a good husband, if she had given him the chance. She looks up at Merlin.

“It’s all gone wrong, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” he says simply. “At least, that’s what I think.”

“Gwen would not have wanted this,” she says, mostly to herself. She turns back to Merlin. “You are as powerful as a god. Please, can you… I do not know if there is any way to set this right.”

“There isn’t.” Merlin’s voice is solemn. “But this doesn’t have to be all that there is. Come with us, with Arthur and me. Mordred is angry, and broken, but he’ll be a good king, and Morgause will keep him honest. You can’t start over. No one can. It doesn’t work that way. But you can forgive, and be forgiven.”

“You truly think Arthur will forgive me?”

Merlin smiles. “We’ll talk him around, you and me.”

When time begins again, Morgana drops her sword on the ground, and holds out her open hand instead.


	3. 2. “A time for the wind to break the loosened pane” – Merlin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first night of magic in Arthur's Camelot, and the future that follows.

There’s a full moon out tonight, and Morgana wonders if it’s true that it can make you mad. She feels a bit mad, tonight – there’s something prickling along her skin, down her spine, behind her eyes. There was a time when she didn’t know what it was, but now she knows it’s magic. She knows that, if she could, she’d reach out from across her bedchamber and fling open the window and let the blinding moonlight pour in, and turn the whole room silver.

And as soon as she thinks it, she thinks, _Why not?_ Uther has been dead a month, and in Morgana’s heart, she has truly mourned him as the second father he tried so hard to be – but just three days ago, Arthur, _King_ Arthur, repealed the ban on magic. Habit, caution and fear have kept her quiet until now, but Morgana wonders what it would feel like, to let her eyes glow gold and finally find out what she can do when she’s not afraid that someone might be watching.

She stares hard at the window, and says, “Open.” When nothing happens, she feels a bit foolish. “Open?” she asks, more hesitantly. The window remains shut. Morgana glares at it. It remains shut. She glares harder.

The window pane shatters.

Morgana shrieks, but she’s perfectly safe – the glass falls harmlessly to the floor below the window, making musical sounds as it hits the stone. Moonlight soars over the windowsill, painting everything an unearthly silver. Morgana reaches out and dips a hand in it, then her whole right arm, then jumps in, laughing like a younger girl. Her jewels rise, as if of their own accord, from her jewelry box on the table by the mirror, and come to whirl around her head like fireflies. The flowers that Gwen brought for her this morning lift themselves from their vase and join the dance, swirling around her. Her shoes, her scarves, her books all fly up and move through the air in patterns, like the dancers at court, while Morgana laughs with delight.

Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door, and everything freezes in place. For a moment, Morgana almost banishes all the objects to their proper places. But she remembers that she can do this now, and no one can chain her up or cast her into the dungeons for it. Defiantly, she sets her belongings to spinning again, and calls, “Come in!”

She feels a little silly when the door opens to reveal Merlin, who is the last person in Camelot from whom she would need to hide her magic. When he sees the flying jewels and slippers, he grins widely, and his eyes take on a childlike wonder. Morgana waves her arm, spinning the objects faster and faster – Merlin dodges a perfume bottle as he dashes through to join her in the eye of the storm. In the moonlight, standing before her, his eyes are eerily silver, and his skin, as pale as her own, nearly glows.

“Do you like it?” Morgana asks, and he nods enthusiastically.

“It’s brilliant. It’s… it’s beautiful.”

“I can now, Merlin,” she tells him, because he understands, because he told her the truth, and now she wants to share this with him. “I _can_, don’t you see?”

“I do,” he says. “Do you—do you trust me?”

“Of course.”

He wets his lips with his tongue and holds out his hands. “Give me your hands?”

She places her hands in his – they’re warmer than her own, and his fingers are long and callused. His eyes flash gold, and then suddenly, amid the whirl of the bits and pieces of Morgana’s life, they’re rising into the air, slowly, slowly, until Morgana throws back her head and laughs with joy, and they nearly float out the open window. Gradually Merlin lowers them back to the floor – his face is bright with happiness, and she realizes that he’s been as lonely in his magic as she has – that this moment, this magic, in this place, means as much to him as it does to her.

“Oh, Merlin,” she murmurs, and cups the side of his face in her left hand. He blushes, and brushes his cheek against her palm like he can’t help himself.

“Morgana…” he whispers, and she just has to kiss the uncertainty off of his face.

When she pulls back, his face is shocked but hungry. He reaches his own hand up to her face, and she lets him trace the line of her cheekbone softly, with the back of his fingers. Hesitantly, he cups the back of her head, threading his fingers through her hair – she loves the feel of it.

“May I kiss you again?” he asks quietly, a note of pleading in his voice.

“Oh, yes,” she replies, and drapes her arm around his shoulders as he pulls her close. He kisses, at first, as if he’s afraid he won’t get the chance again. When she meets his kiss with equal fervor, when she opens her mouth beneath his, he dares to pull her even closer, pressing her tightly against him as if they could fuse together. With a casual flick of her wrist, Morgana dismisses the whirling objects to their usual homes. Merlin responds by dropping them both summarily onto the bed with his magic, ending up with her knee in his stomach by accident.

“Oof!” he groans. Morgana laughs, and makes exaggerated sympathetic noises until he buries his hands in her hair again and kisses her quiet. When he drops a row of kisses down her neck, she admires the moonlight’s shimmer on his face, his hands – she wants more of it.

“Off,” she orders imperiously, tugging at his shirt and tunic; laughing, he sits back on his heels and pulls them both off with a few smooth movements. Morgana hums, pleased, and runs her fingers through his sparse chest hair, and pets the pale, spare lines of his stomach. When her hand drifts lower, he gasps, and clenches his eyes shut, looking almost pained. Looking very serious, he lays his hand deliberately and carefully on the lacing of Morgana’s bodice.

“May I?”

Suddenly shy, Morgana looks away. “I’ve not… ever done this before.”

He lays a comforting, brief kiss on her lips, and when he pulls away to meet her eyes, his face is rueful. “As you might guess, from my impressive grace and coordination earlier, I—I haven’t either.”

“Oh,” Morgana says, feeling inexplicably better – rationally, she knows that it would be beneficial if at least one of them knew what they were doing, but Merlin’s long fingers stroking along the nape of her neck drive rational thought away.

“I’ll take care of you if you take care of me,” he tells her seriously, and Morgana remembers that, strange as it seems, she could hurt him, too. Not physically – she’s no weakling, but Merlin could still probably overpower her – but Merlin is a sweet soul, a country boy, a painfully honest person, for all that he has had to lie so many times.

“I promise,” she whispers.

“Me, too,” he replies. “May I?”

She nods, and Merlin’s clever hands slowly unlace the bodice of her dress, and then the lacing of her shift beneath. When he folds the layers of cloth back to reveal her breasts and stomach, Morgana holds her breath, but his eyes drink her in, and his expression is awed and tender.

“Wow,” he says simply, and Morgana laughs, but he draws one finger down the center of her body, from the dip of her collarbone down to her belly button, where her skirts begin, and says quietly, “You are so beautiful.”

“Touch me,” she asks, and he does. He plays, as if he is learning her body like a new spell – he touches every inch of bare skin that he can reach, then dives down to kiss her deeply. When he slides back to lay kisses along her collarbone, the movement drags his bare skin against her nipples, and it’s her turn to gasp. “Do that again,” she says, and he does, and it’s delicious. “There, there, touch me there,” she insists, guiding his hands to her breasts, and he eagerly complies, stroking his callused thumbs up the full lower curves, rolling her nipples between his fingers. “Your mouth,” she gasps, and that’s even better, better than anything she’s ever done herself, here in this bed on bright moonlit nights like this one.

“Get me out of this,” she begs urgently, tugging at her sleeves, her skirts, and he throws her a mischievous grin before somehow magicking her whole dress and shift to the other side of the room instantly, where it falls in an unceremonious heap.

“You have got to teach me that,” Morgana says fervently, enjoying the feel of the warm summer air on her bare body.

“You can practice now, if you like,” he offers, gesturing at his own trousers with an uncertain smile.

Morgana concentrates on how desperately she needs to feel his naked skin, and her eyes flash gold – unfortunately, it appears that skill and practice count for more than intentions, because Merlin ends up hanging from one trouser leg from the ceiling over the bed.

“Merlin!” she gasps, half laughing, half worried, but he just strips out of the other pants leg with a minimum of fuss, and drops to the bed beside her, laughing whole-heartedly.

“So maybe a little more practice,” he murmurs against her mouth, stroking both hands up and down her body like he can’t get enough of her skin. “Please, I want to make you feel good, tell me what you want—” and Morgana’s not quite sure what she wants, not quite sure she’s ready for what she knows that men and women do together, but she knows what she likes when she’s alone, and she knows that Merlin’s fingers can be very clever indeed.

She guides his hand down between her legs, and quickly discovers that it’s apparently much more difficult to figure out what feels good on someone else’s body, because Merlin is clearly giving it his best effort, but it’s not what she needs.

“Sorry, sorry,” Merlin is muttering. “I’m not quite—I keep slipping—I haven’t ever actually _seen_—“ He gives her a pleading look, and asks desperately, “Can I just—would you mind if I just _looked_, for just a moment? At… you?”

Morgana’s body informs her that, no, she would not mind that at all – she can feel herself growing wetter at the image. She nods, and Merlin slips down to the foot of the bed, gently nudging her thighs further apart, exposing her to the moonlight.

“Wow,” he says again, simply gazing at her, staring, almost, and Morgana shivers. He reaches out a hand to gently stroke apart her inner lips, and traces them up and down. His finger dips briefly into her cunt, then smoothes the slickness upward until—

“There,” he declares happily as Morgana moans. “Is that—that’s right, isn’t it?”

“Why… are you… stopping?” Morgana grits out, glaring.

“Sorry, sorry,” he mumbles, “just, just one thing, and then I’ll get right back to it, I promise.” He strokes his hands up the inside of her thighs, guiding them apart, then slowly moves inward to lay a gentle, almost chaste kiss on her vulva. Morgana’s whole body shudders, and Merlin grins cheekily and says, “Right, remember that one for later,” before returning to his previous pursuit.

“I like this,” he murmurs into her mouth as his fingers stroke her higher and higher, “I can kiss you at the same time.”

“Merlin,” Morgana moans before her words desert her, and she comes, fluttering against his fingers, sinking her teeth into his bottom lip as her eyes slip closed like stones dropped into deep water.

When she floats pleasantly back to articulate consciousness, she can feel Merlin pressing hard against her thigh, and can hear him saying apologetically, “—just your hand would be—or, you know, this is good, this is… wonderful. You are so beautiful, and I love kissing you, I could kiss you a hundred times—”

“Oh, Merlin,” Morgana says fondly, and she doesn’t know what she was ever frightened of. It’s Merlin. “Fuck me.”

“Morgana!” He bucks against her, then puts on a mock-disapproving look. “Such language from a highborn lady.”

She lifts a sardonic eyebrow. “If that means you’re not interested—”

“Oh, no,” he says hurriedly, “I am very interested, no doubt at all, lots and lots of interest.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” she asks, and he blushes. “Could you, um, would you be willing to…” he trails off, then lies down on his back on the bed, and sort of beckons her toward him until she gets the idea that he wants her to straddle him. “It’s—“ He blushes again, even harder this time. “I really like your hair, I like it in the moonlight, and on your skin. You don’t have to, we can do it the other way—”

Morgana finds that kissing Merlin is an extremely effective way of shutting him up.

“It’ll hurt,” she reminds him, and he starts to sit up, looking worried, and says, “Maybe this isn’t—”

Morgana puts a stop to that by sinking down on his cock in one swift thrust. It does hurt. It hurts quite a lot. Also, he comes right away, and then looks torn between dying of embarrassment and dying of guilt from hurting her. When it looks as if he might hyperventilate, Morgana grabs his hands and swiftly directs one of them between her legs, and another to her breast.

“Distract me,” she says firmly.

“Distract you. I can do that.”

By the time Merlin is hard again, Morgana is well and truly distracted. She rides him, her breasts bouncing, her hair flying around her face, silver in the light from the open window, and the look on Merlin’s face tells her that the sight of her is everything that he had hoped it would be. Even the second time, it doesn’t take him long to come, but that’s probably for the best, since Morgana is still sore. Ever the gentleman, he brings her to climax one more time with his hands before collapsing to the bed beside her, breathing hard and grinning foolishly. For once, it seems as if he has nothing to say.

Afterward, Morgana lays her head down on the plane of his chest. She likes the shape of it, and besides, his shoulder is far too bony to be comfortable. Suddenly a thought occurs to her.

“Oh, blast,” she says.

“What?”

Morgana laces her hands on Merlin’s breastbone, and props her chin up on them, looking down into his lovely blue eyes.

“Do you remember that vision I told you about, two months ago?”

He frowns, thinking.

“You’ve had a lot of visions lately, I don’t know if—”

She can tell he remembers when his body freezes under her.

“Morgana,” he says carefully, “I am so sorry. I’ll do whatever you ask – there are drafts, Gaius taught them to me, if you don’t want—or I’ll marry you… well, I’d marry you if I could. I suppose that’s not worth much, but I do mean it. I’m sorry, Morgana.”

“Don’t be,” Morgana says, after a minute’s reflection. “I’m not.”

“You’re not?”

Morgana rises up onto her elbow, and brushes a hand softly down the side of Merlin’s face. He is a good man, with a loving heart and no selfishness in him. He has been a dear and steadfast friend, and he will make a good father. Also, on a separate note, he is a handsome man with sweet, smiling lips and very talented hands, who can take direction in bed. And he makes her laugh.

“No,” she says firmly. “I’m not sorry. Now what is this about you not being able to marry me?”

“I would if I could,” Merlin tells her, eyes a little sad. “But I know that I’m…”

“That you’re what?” Morgana prods.

He blushes and looks away, the corners of his mouth curling down. “You’re a lady of the court. The king’s sister, or as good as. And I’m a manservant.”

“No,” Morgana says, smiling, “you’re a sorcerer. The Court Sorcerer, before the week is out, I should imagine. Also, you’re a bigger fool than even Arthur thinks if you believe that the king won’t be marrying my maidservant the first chance he gets. Things are… new, Merlin. The things that I dreamed for Arthur – the things that you saw in him, that Gwen saw in him – are coming true. So if you’d rather not make an honest woman of me, you needn’t. I’m not afraid of disapproving looks, or being thought a loose woman. But… if you think you could… love me,” she whispers, looking down at her hands, splayed white against Merlin’s matching paleness, and trailing off.

Merlin pets her face clumsily until she meets his eyes, then gives her a lop-sided smile. “I think that shouldn’t be too hard,” he tells her, and she smiles back at him, glad. “I think,” he whispers, hiding his face in her neck, “I think I might be halfway there already.”

Morgana cannot help but kiss him soundly, after that.

She sets her head back on his chest – she’s becoming quite fond of this particular spot – and breathes with his heartbeat for a minute.

“Camelot has many enemies,” Merlin says, in a tone that transparently tries to be casual.

“Mm,” Morgana says.

“I mean, especially magical ones. I don’t know how it was before, but since I’ve come to Camelot, it seems like some magical creature or rogue sorcerer attacks the kingdom every third week, sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” Morgana agrees, curious to see what he’s driving at.

“So, you know,” he says, a little uncertainly, “I imagine that, well, just a Court Sorcerer wouldn’t really be enough, would it? I mean, I think a… Court Sorceress, too – don’t you?”

“From what little I understood of that,” Morgana begins, amused, and Merlin scowls. She kisses the scowl away and whispers, “I like that. I think you’re right. Can you imagine it, with both of us by Arthur’s side? Arthur, on the battlefield, marshalling his men, and then the two of us, calling lightning and fire and flood – armies parting before us like fields of grain.”

“You sound like you like that image,” Merlin says – it’s clear he doesn’t condemn her, but doesn’t really understand it, either.

“I may be happy – and I am,” Morgana says, shrugging, “but I’m still Morgana. I am still myself, as much as I’ve ever been.”

“You like the power,” he says. His eyes look far away, and his face seems older, somehow, as he confesses, “Sometimes I do, too. But mostly, I’m afraid of it. Afraid of what I might do with it, what I might become.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Morgana tells him fiercely, and the words echo strangely, like a vow. “I won’t let you lose yourself. Will you promise the same to me?”

“I will,” he says, and his words ring out, too. “I promise you.” After a moment, he breaks the dark moment with a smile, saying, “There. Now we’re practically married already.”

“I’m not vowing to obey you,” Morgana warns him, and when he wrinkles his nose and says, “I wouldn’t want you to. Can you even imagine?” that’s how she knows she’s chosen right.

 

~*~

 

In just five years’ time, Arthur’s rule and Camelot’s expanding borders have frightened the other lords of Albion; they marshal their forces for a concerted attack. Morgana and Lancelot have earned their place as Arthur’s generals. They ride out to war and leave the kingdom in the queen’s sure hands.

They are a sight like Albion has never seen, when they stride out of their tent at sunrise – Arthur in the center, his gold-washed mail catching the sunlight, almost blinding, regal and confident and finally grown into his powers; at his right hand, Lancelot, in steel mail that gleams and draws the eye to his steady grace, his hair grown out once again and waving around his face, his eyes only for his king; and at Arthur’s left hand, Morgana, her dark hair a glory, spilling over the shoulders of her plate mail, enameled black and washed with protective symbols that eat up the light as fiercely as Arthur’s armor reflects it.

Behind them walks Merlin, his eyes watchful, his lack of armor a wordless assurance that a man who can stop a hundred flying arrows with a glance needs no protection but his own power. Through all of Camelot’s little wars that have led them to this great battle, he has stayed at Arthur’s side, protecting his king and holding his power in reserve while Lancelot and Morgana rode out to show the force of Camelot’s might with sword and spell. Now the two greatest sorcerers in Albion go to war side by side, and the winds whisper strangely at their passing.

There are men who grumble and scoff at being led by a woman, men who were not there at the fall of Gore, and the siege of Mercia; but there are others, those who have fought under her banner before, and men from families who kept the old ways in secret, who remember that the god of battle was once a goddess: the Morrigan, who rode a black horse, and drew carrion crows in her wake. Every time Morgana returns to her tent with her naked sword caked red and her eyes swirling gold, the whispers of the old religion grow louder, and the grumbles die away. Her men are proud to follow her; her king is proud to lead her; Merlin is proud to love her.

And every night, Merlin performs his old duties, carefully removing his wife’s armor the way he once did for his king, forcing his exhausted arms to unbuckle her plate and gently lift the chainmail over her head. After he has gently washed the blood from her face and kissed some of the wildness of battle out of her eyes, they sit across from each other on the bed, place their hands palm to palm, rest their foreheads together, and reach out with their minds across the miles to Brynna’s nursery. Most nights, Morgana sings a lullaby – Merlin’s singing voice could frighten goats – after Brynna babbles away excitedly about going fishing in the stream, or naming the newborn filly in the stables, or watching Cook make apple pies.

“I miss her,” Merlin says quietly one night.

“It’s a little odd for me to think that someday my daughter will help me with my armor the way I used to help my father,” Morgana muses.

“You think you’ll be fighting that long?” Merlin asks – he hopes she is wrong.

Morgana shrugs. “I know you despise it. But I love it. It is who I am.”

Merlin pulls her close, and whispers worriedly into her hair, “Don’t love it too much.”

She brushes a kiss against his cheek. “That’s what I have you for. You promised, remember?”

“I remember.”

At a plain called Camlann, the enemies of Camelot make their last stand. Their forces are formidable – not merely warriors, but sorcerers, and great magical beasts that can devour a man whole. When it comes to sorcerers, Camelot and her allies are vastly outnumbered – Uther’s purges were all too effective. Against the ten enemy magic-users who take the field on that final day, Arthur can set only two.

But those two are Merlin and Morgana.

The battle begins at morning; at noon, the outcome is not yet certain, but as night starts to fall, the enemy kingdoms begin to offer their surrender, one by one. The fighting is over – not soon enough for Merlin, who is exhausted beyond imagining, and sick of death. The fighting is over, but the western flank of Arthur’s army, Merlin sees, is attacking more furiously than ever. Lightning flashes above the battlefield; crows wheel; and in the middle of it, Morgana. Her eyes are burning golden, and her laugh is jagged and bright as she swings her sword – the blood of the man she decapitates sprays across her face, and her tongue licks it away from her lips hungrily.

“Morgana!” Arthur is shouting. “The battle is over! Damn it, Morgana, it’s finished. I—I order you to command your men to stand down!” but the men are caught up in Morgana’s spell, laughing with the joy of battle, dancing to the beat of war drums. He turns to Merlin, but his court sorcerer is already gone, spurring his horse faster and faster across the battlefield. He is bone tired, but five years ago, on the night that he first fell in love with Morgana, he made a vow, and he has never forgotten it.

“Morgana!” he cries when he reaches her side, and when she turns to smile at him, there is blood on her teeth.

“Isn’t it beautiful, Merlin?” she asks him, eyes far away, drunk on magic and blood.

Merlin draws on the last dregs of magic within him, reserves he did not know he had, and flings out a blanket of sleep over this swathe of the battlefield. Men sag in their saddles, or fall gently to the ground, eyes closed and faces peaceful. Morgana whirls on him, enraged, and Merlin catches her in his arms and says, “I promised, remember? Because I love you. And I do. And you love me, too. And I… cherish you, the real you. So I can’t let you go.”

She fights him, claws at him, spits and swears, but slowly, her eyes recognize him, and they fade until they are merely naturally beautiful.

“I promised,” he tells her again. She nods. They stand silently for a while, until Lancelot and Arthur ride up beside them.

“It takes some people that way,” Arthur says, squinting into the distance with his trademark refusal to look anyone in the eyes in an awkward situation. “Fortunately, most of them aren’t also incredibly powerful sorceresses. And even more fortunately, the ones who are incredibly powerful sorceresses happen to have married incredibly powerful sorcerers who can bring them back to themselves.”

“Convenient, that,” Merlin agrees, with some semblance of his usual cheerfulness, and he knows that somehow this will all be well.

“Thank you,” Morgana says, when Lancelot and Arthur are gone.

“You’d do the same for me,” Merlin replies.

“I would,” she says, somehow making those two words both threatening and comforting. “Will you take me home, Merlin?”

“I will.”

Years later, Morgana and Merlin will return to this field, with Brynna and the druid boy Mordred, and from the blood and fire, new green wheat will sprout, and in the deep gashes in the land, streams will flow. Merlin will hand his daughter a little acorn to plant, and she will raise it up until the oak sapling’s first leaves tickle her cheeks.

Many years after that, Merlin and Morgana will walk the plain of Camlann one last time, and lie down at the foot of the mighty oak tree that shades the tall golden wheat, and the wildflowers below. Arms wrapped around each other, they will close their eyes and wait, as the great oak roots overgrow them, and the rich soil drifts over them, and daises sprout from between their entwined fingers. There they will sleep until their king calls them once more.


	4. 3. “Sings below inveterate scars” – Lancelot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> King Cendred is looking for mercenaries and sorcerers, and Morgana is both.

She goes by Anna now, and that’s the name she gives to the steward.

“I am here to see King Cendred.”

“And why would he want to see you, girlie?” the steward asks, looking her up and down dismissively, scoffing at her worn riding leathers, and the sword strapped at her side. She’s used to reactions like his – they don’t bother her anymore.

“Because he put out a call for mercenaries and sorcerers. And I’m both,” she tells him.

Apparently, Cendred has decided to start taking his bandit problems seriously – not seriously enough to send his own men, of course, but seriously enough to pay some swords-for-hire to take care of it for him. Morgana, as Anna, has built up a good reputation both with her sword and her magic, and she’s hired immediately. She joins the other hired men – all of them men, which is normal – and a few days later, they ride out to the borderlands, with no real strategy or leadership. That’s also normal. Once they get there, to the grey, rocky hills that look as if they exist in a state of permanent rain, they meet up with another group of mercenaries, together with their leader, one of Cendred’s knights, and begin the thankless task of attempting to track a small band of light raiders on horseback over rocky terrain.

It isn’t until the second day of tracking that Morgana sees him, and for a moment she thinks she must have been mistaken – but he turns again to ladle some stew from the communal pot, and there’s no doubt that the man with the scar on his cheek is Lancelot. When she sees him head for an isolated spot far enough from the camp to be quiet, she follows him.

“I’m not really looking for company,” he says without looking. When he turns and sees her, he stammers an apology, saying, “Sorry, miss, I didn’t mean to be rude. I just… would like to be alone, if I may.”

“You may,” she tells him, amused, “but not until you apologize for not recognizing me.”

He does a double take and looks closer, then swears. “It can’t be. Lady Morgana?”

“I go by Anna now,” she explains. “It’s safer.”

“Forgive me for not recognizing you,” he says, motioning for her to sit beside him on one of the omnipresent rocks, “but you are the last person I would expect to see in this place, in this company. How did you come to be here? It is no place for a noble lady, my lady.”

“Believe it or not, I had noticed that,” Morgana says, bone dry. She has the scars to prove it. She sighs. “I performed magic, in front of the court, to save Gwen’s life.” There is an hour’s worth of story compressed into that sentence, but Morgana is too tired to bare her history here and now. “By his own laws, Uther should have had me killed, but instead he sentenced me to exile – I cannot cross Camelot’s borders for as long as I live. There are not many ways for a woman alone to make a living, if she has no domestic talents – which I do not.” She looks down at her hands, which have become so rough and scarred that the Lady Morgana who first met Lancelot would not recognize them as her own. “I am good at this,” she says, and she is. “I am a skilled swordswoman, and my magic is as strong as my sword arm. I can cripple any man who seeks to do me harm.”

Lancelot looks off into some place in the distance that only he can see. “And when you kill a man in the ring for some fat warlord’s pleasure; when you fight some petty baron’s war of injured pride, or when you see men whose part you have been paid to take put women and children to the sword, or force themselves on village girls – and that’s when you can get paying work at all – are you still proud of your strong sword arm and your noble heart?”

He thinks to shock her, but Morgana has seen all that, and worse.

“My strong sword arm keeps me alive,” she says quietly. “As for my noble heart, I would have sold it months ago if anyone would give me gold or silver for it. Since they will not, I keep it safe for the one it truly belongs to.”

When he turns to look at her again, his smile is tired and sweet. “I think we have much in common, Lady Anna.”

“It seems we do, Sir Lancelot.”

 

~*~

 

When Cendred’s bandits are routed, Morgana and Lancelot take the same road out of the city without needing to discuss it. They fight well back-to-back, they live according to the same code, and they love the same woman. What more do they need? Over campfires, Lancelot listens eagerly to her stories about Camelot – about Gwen, whom he obviously still cares for deeply, and about Arthur, whom he clearly idolizes. She does not ask him for stories of his life as a mercenary – it’s not a life that lends itself to harmless and charming anecdotes – but she does beg him to recount for her, many times, the tale of how he rescued Gwen from Hengist. She has heard it from Gwen, of course, but she likes to hear it from his perspective, too.

“She looked very beautiful in your dress,” he muses, obviously enjoying the image, before blushing and saying, “Not as lovely as you surely must have, of course—”

She laughs. “No, you’re right. I remember one day, I persuaded her to try on all of my dresses, and it was extremely frustrating, because every one of them looked better on her than on me. Of course, she said the opposite, but that’s just modesty.”

“You are both very beautiful women,” Lancelot says diplomatically, and Morgana inclines her head. “Thank you, sir. You are a true gentleman.”

“I am no gentleman,” he says, in a low voice, staring into the fire.

She cups his cheek in her palm and turns him until he has no choice but to meet her eyes. “I know, because you told Gwen, and because you have told me, that you think every gentle and noble thing has been stamped out of you, but I must tell you now that if you could see yourself as I see you, as Gwen must have seen you, you would know how truly good a man you are. It shines out of you in spite of everything, like candlelight escaping from a dirty lantern. Trust me. You know I see true things.”

“I have done things that make me sick—”

“Good,” Morgana says bluntly, “not good that you’ve done them, but good that they make you sick. As long as you still feel something at the thought of evil, there is something good in you. It is when you become indifferent to evil that you are lost.”

Lancelot looks as if he is about to object, then swallows his words and stares at her thoughtfully.

“I will think on what you have said.” He looks torn. “Gwen—”

And there they come to the crux of it. Gently, Morgana says, “I have always found Gwen’s capacity for forgiveness to be the nearest thing to infinite. She sees the best in people. I am sure she will see the best in you.”

His look, this time, is curious.

“You encourage me, even though you—well, I had thought…” He blushes, but perseveres. “I did not know that there were women whose thoughts tended toward other women.”

Morgana laughs, and his blush darkens. He offers her a rueful smile as he says, “I know it is foolish – I knew that there were men who desired other men, so of course it should follow that the same should be true of women. Unless… I have mistaken you?” he asks, but she shakes her head.

“You have me right, Sir Lancelot. I am a woman, and I have, in my time, desired both men and women, first among them… Gwen.” It is harder to say than she thought it would be – she has never said it before. “That is the kind of woman I am. And,” she says, striving to skate over old hurt, “the kind of woman that Gwen… is not. So it costs me nothing to encourage you.”

“I do not think that that is true,” he says quietly, and she turns away from his pity.

 

~*~

 

They work better and better together, moving in tandem like dancers. She teaches him how to fight a magic-user, and he teaches her how to fight with a knife. Within a year, she thinks that there is no corner of Albion across which they have not traveled. In a way, she supposes, it was inevitable that they would fall into bed with each other. She can tell he wants her, but he holds back because he still believes her too fair and unsullied for him. She wants him, but holds back because some part of her likes that there is still someone in the world who sees her that way.

It is after a job gone wrong, where their employer tries to double-cross them and take Morgana for his own – and nearly succeeds – that they find themselves curled in a stall in a village inn, with their horses whickering softly in the next stall over. They’ve slept rougher than this, but rarely so close, and never so frightened. In the warm dark and the smell of hay, she reaches out blindly, finds the shape of his face, and kisses him. He kisses her back with equal feeling, then breaks away, still close enough to share her breath.

“I am not Gwen,” he murmurs.

“Neither am I,” she replies. “And I have done things that… that even with all that is between us, I do not think I could confess to you.”

“You know I feel the same,” he whispers, stroking his thumb along her lower lip.

“I have…” Morgana has killed men, many men by now, and somehow this is still almost too painful to say. “I have given my body to men for money,” she exhales in a rush, and without her consent, a tear slips out of her eye and down her cheek.

He trembles against her, and just as she is about to turn away and forget this as a foolish thing, he breathes out, shuddering, “So have I.”

“Oh, Lancelot.” She strokes his face tenderly, and they taste each other’s tears when they kiss. When they come together, he touches her as if she is something he never thought himself lucky enough to have, palming her hip with desperate strength, but cupping her breast with unbearable tenderness. She tries to show him, with the vulnerability of her skin and the reverence of her own touches, how worthy and beautiful she finds him. They are broken people, reaching for someone who is not there, but there’s nothing sad about this night, or the nights that will follow. It’s good, Morgana thinks, to have someone to hold her close in the dark, and if it’s never more than that, it never needs to be.

Of course, then her cycle doesn’t come, and she remembers the vision she had – it seems so long ago, but it’s only been two years. Living the life she does, Morgana learned quickly how to make the teas that would flush her womb, but… perhaps it would not be so bad, to take a permanent place in a lord’s household for a while, to settle down. No place is Camelot, but unless Morgana can learn to be happy in some single place, she’s out of luck if she becomes wounded, or fortunate enough to suffer old age.

Morgana puts it off and puts it off, until one night, bedded down in a cave between jobs, Lancelot runs his hand down her torso and his breath hitches, and his muscles tense, and she realizes that she can’t make him ask.

“I’m with child,” she tells him, and his breath leaves him quickly, and he rises from the blanket and starts to pace.

He stops, and whirls to face her.

“I will marry you, of course.”

Morgana snorts indelicately. “First of all, I think you’ll find that you need to consult with me, first, before doing any such thing; and second, no, you will not marry me, don’t be silly. You’re marrying Gwen. No one else is good enough for her.”

“Your honor—” he insists, and Morgana rises to stroke a hand down his cheek affectionately.

“I have killed and fucked for money, Lancelot. Whatever honor I have left is a damn sight too strong to be dented by the birth of a bastard child, I promise you that.”

“You are so much more than—”

“Hello?” someone calls, from the mouth of the cave. “Morgana?”

Merlin stumbles into the circle of firelight. He looks around, and lights up when he sees Lancelot. “Lancelot! You’re here, too! This is brilliant.” He looks around again, and something in their postures and facial expressions suddenly seems to sink in.

“Um. Have I come at a bad time?”

Merlin explains that Uther is dead – no one in the cave even pretends to be sorry – and that Arthur has sent him to search for Morgana, and to bring her back to Camelot if she’s willing to come.

“After I found Morgana, Gwen asked me to look for you, Lancelot,” Merlin says, and Morgana watches impassively as Lancelot glows at the good news. “She’s… really missed both of you.”

A shadow passes across Lancelot’s face, and he looks uncomfortable as he asks, “If I may venture – I apologize if this is inappropriate…”

“Spit it out,” Morgana says fondly.

“Is the lady Guinevere, as yet, unmarried?” He looks anxious. “I know that once there was some feeling between the prince and—”

“No, no, no,” Merlin says, eyes wide. “Gwen is… amazing. Fantastic. Without her, we’d have… but no. Arthur and Gwen – no. Arthur is—um. You have nothing to worry about there. Believe me.”

As Lancelot packs up their belongings, still in a haze of disbelief at his good fortune, Morgana asks slyly, “So you and Arthur, hmm?”

When Merlin blushes and stammers, Morgana tries not to laugh. “I don’t know how you stand him, but I’m glad to hear he’s had someone close who isn’t afraid to call him an arrogant idiot when he deserves it.”

“It hasn’t been the same without you,” he says quietly. “It broke Gwen’s heart, and Arthur never trusted his father again. Things were bad—very bad. Uther saw traitors around every corner, by the end, and he wasn’t far wrong. We know it’s bad to be so happy now that he’s gone, but—” Merlin shrugs. “Things are going to be better now, for everyone. Arthur’s making that happen. And everything – all the danger, and the fear, and the waiting are going to have been worth it, for Arthur’s Camelot, and Arthur’s Albion.”

Morgana studies him, and smiles a little. “You really believe in him, don’t you? The way Lancelot believes in Gwen.”

“Yes,” Merlin says decisively, “I do. I love him.” He shoots her a sheepish grin. “Maybe someday I’ll even tell him that.”

“I’m sure he already knows,” Morgana murmurs.

As they ride out for Camelot, Morgana asks Merlin what they’re planning to do about a Queen.

“Well,” he ventures, “we were hoping that… well, that _you’d_ be Queen.”

Morgana absorbs that news silently – there was a time in her life when she had thought a great deal about being Queen: Uther’s power and pride had seemed certain to secure her a marriage worthy of a princess, and she had been trained from a very young age to run a royal household. In the past few years, Morgana has slept in stables, in ditches, in caves, in open fields and in alleyways. It has been so long since she last thought of herself as highborn that Merlin’s proposal comes as an honest shock to her. But in any case, it cannot be.

“I’m afraid that you’ll have to look elsewhere, Merlin,” she says, and he looks crestfallen. She explains, “I’m with child, and it will be very obvious, very soon: if not when we arrive, then shortly after. All the court will know the child cannot be Arthur’s.”

“Oh, but Morgana,” Merlin enthuses, “with child – that’s wonderful!”

Morgana gives Merlin a slightly bemused look.

“Isn’t it?” he asks, in a small voice.

“I still think I should marry you,” Lancelot says, thereby revealing the precise piece of information that Morgana had desired to keep concealed. She grits her teeth as Merlin’s eyes pop open even wider, and says evenly, “While I do appreciate the chivalrous impulse, Lancelot, I have not changed my mind. It is best for everyone if you marry Gwen.”

Merlin turns to Morgana with a thoughtful look that seems out of place on his open face, reminding Morgana that this is something else she will have to get used to: the fact that she is not the only one who the last few years have changed, and aged. “Perhaps not,” he begins, and Morgana listens.

 

~*~

 

Morgana’s return to Camelot is perhaps the strangest thing she has ever experienced. She knows that this place used to be her home, but her instincts have changed – she catches herself evaluating its defensive capabilities, imagining how best to besiege it, or infiltrate it. It is all that she can do to stay on her horse when she catches sight of a young boy openly performing magic in Camelot’s streets. Both she and the place are so changed that it does not feel like Camelot at all, but like some dream version, with stairs that go nowhere, and nonsense words hovering in the air.

Morgana chooses not to be present when Gwen is reunited with Lancelot. Whether obligation would move Gwen to unwillingly embrace her first, or whether she would be so overcome that Morgana would be forced to wait while Lancelot received a hero’s welcome, it would be equally troubling either way. Instead, she goes to greet the king.

“Morgana,” he says, and he wraps his arms around her as if he is afraid that she will be ripped away at any moment.

When he finally lets her go, she steps back to get a good look at him. He wears kingship well – his eyes are older, and even a little harder, but there is no cruelty in them. The robes of his position fit him beautifully, and he has grown into the regal contours of his face.

“Merlin tells me that you will be a great king,” she murmurs.

“You would have made a great queen,” he replies, with genuine regret.

“Merlin explained it to us,” Morgana says, watching his eyes carefully. “You will marry Gwen and love Merlin. Gwen will marry you and love Lancelot. Lancelot will marry me and love Gwen.”

“And you will marry Lancelot and love…?” He raises an inquiring eyebrow, but the contents of Morgana’s heart are not for Arthur’s prying.

“I will be Morgana,” she tells him, in a tone that brooks no argument.

“And that is a marvel in and of itself,” he says, with a fondness that makes her blush. “I… have missed you,” he tells her awkwardly. “We all have. I am sorry for my father’s—”

Interrupting him, Morgana says firmly, “You do not have to apologize to me, Arthur. Just… be a better kind of king yourself. That is all I ask.”

Taking her hand, Arthur asks seriously, “You may ask for much, much more than that. Is there anything that I can give you, or do for you, Morgana—anything that will… I want you happy,” he finishes.

Morgana closes her eyes and breathes in. Even the smell of the place is different, somehow. She loves these people; she loves this place; but this castle is the home of some other, younger, unscarred woman. She could reside here; but she would never truly live here. It could be her house, but she does not think it can ever be her home again. It is Merlin and Arthur’s home now; it is Gwen and Lancelot’s home, where they will share their first kiss, and exchange their vows, and raise their children, and she does not begrudge them any of that. That is the life that she fought for. But it is not her life.

“A castle,” she says, opening her eyes. “A small castle, with lands. You can deed it to Lancelot – he will have to be landed anyway, to be a lord – and I can administer it in his name. There was a time when I was trained to do that – to administer my husband’s estate – and I do not think that I have forgotten how. I have other skills now,” she says softly, “but I am tired of their use. I want to see things grow.”

“It is done,” Arthur promises.

 

~*~

 

Gwen and Arthur and Morgana and Lancelot are married in a beautiful double ceremony, in the open courtyard, with all the pomp and circumstance that Arthur’s steward can dream up. Morgana’s dress is tailored impeccably, but all the seamstress’s tricks in the world cannot hide her condition – Merlin tells her she looks more stunning than ever, which might be worth something if she thought he had any natural appreciation for the female form to begin with, but is nice to hear nonetheless.

Before she leaves for the castle near Camlann that Arthur has deeded to her, she says goodbye to Gwen alone. Gwen rests a hand on Morgana’s belly even though Morgana has told her that it is too soon to feel any kicking, and asks for the sixth time, “Is it really all right? Not just because of the baby, although I know that that’s—but I know you were close—”

Morgana covers Gwen’s hand with her own, and shakes her head. “Lancelot has loved you with his whole heart since the moment you met. This is what is right for him, and for you.”

“And what about what you feel, Morgana?” Gwen insists, and Morgana feels her love brush against the inner walls of her heart, shifting in its sleep, but she lets it lie as she always has, and merely enjoys the warmth of knowing its sweet, familiar shape.

“Most people,” Morgana says quietly, “would be so glad to have their own happiness that they would ask no questions, afraid to learn something that might prick their conscience into giving up something that they love.”

“I am not most people,” Gwen says firmly, and Morgana clasps her hand even more tightly, and lets the few tears that want to come, come.

“No. You’re not,” she agrees, and she and Gwen cry together until it is time for her to leave.

 

~*~

 

Morgana is walking in the wide field south of the castle walls, collecting herbs with Gwendolyn, laughing when the little girl comes back with a frog instead of a sprig of rosemary, begging to be allowed to take it home.

“Put the frog back in his home,” Morgana says firmly. “Frogs live in ponds, not castles.”

Gwendolyn scurries off, muddy skirts tangling around her legs, and Morgana shakes her head, amazed at her daughter’s seemingly endless supply of energy. Perhaps she should send Gwendolyn off to Camelot for the summer again, and let Merlin chase her around all day and night.

“Morgana,” a man’s voice says, very close, and Morgana whirls around to find a young man, no older than twenty, standing before her. He is pale and dark-haired, like she is, with freckles, and he must have moved very quickly and quietly indeed to have startled her. She is not afraid. She has magical powers beyond the knowledge of mortal men, and a very large knife in her belt.

“Morgana,” he says again, and Morgana thinks it is curious that he calls her by her name, with no title. It makes her look more closely, and then she recognizes the face changed by years.

“Mordred.”

He nods, and smiles, and she smiles in return.

“Welcome to my home, Mordred.”

A furrow appears between his brows and he says, “But this is not your home. Camelot is your home, and you have been exiled from it, cast out by the fortunate ones, who enjoy their power and their lovers while you wait here, lonely and abandoned, far from home.”

“Mordred,” Morgana asks, taken aback, “why have you come here?”

“To help you,” he says fervently. “To help you take your rightful place, and your revenge.”

“Revenge against whom?”

Now it is Mordred’s turn to look taken aback. “Against the king who exiled you. Against the sorcerer who stole your place, the queen who rejected you, and the man who left you with child and then abandoned you.”

Morgana raises an elegant eyebrow. “You mean, against my brother, my dearest friend, the love of my life, and the father of my child?”

“Aren’t you angry?” he cries. “They have wronged you! They stood idly by while King Uther, the same king who claimed to love you, the king who killed my father and wiped out my people, exiled you to danger and poverty and loneliness! They exclude you from their life of sunshine and courting and love!”

“I have love,” Morgana says mildly, as Gwendolyn comes running back over the hill, presumably now frog-less. “And I certainly have no shortage of sunshine. I can’t deny that some courting would be nice, but I seem to be a one-woman sort of woman.”

“You are not angry,” he says, with astonishment.

“No,” she agrees, bending down to sweep Gwendolyn up in her arms, listening to her daughter babble about all of the slimy creatures she made friends with down at the pond.

“You are happy,” he pronounces, with surprise, but also with a kind of vulnerability that moves her. “You are not bitter or lonely or afraid.”

“No,” she agrees again.

He is silent for a moment while Gwendolyn stares at him, curious but too well-trained to ask rude questions of a stranger.

“Will you teach me?” he asks finally, surprising her this time.

She thinks about it. Happiness, she feels, is probably not something that can be taught. On the other hand, she could use an extra hand with Gwendolyn, and this man seems like he very much needs a home.

“Yes,” she says. “I will teach you what I know. And at Midsummer, we will go to Camelot, you and I.”

“And me!” Gwendolyn pipes up.

“Of course,” Morgana says solemnly. “Although I may just leave you there for Merlin to deal with. What do you think? Are you too much trouble to come home? Do I have to leave you with the King and Queen and Merlin and Father?”

“Yes!” Gwendolyn exclaims cheerfully. “Too much trouble!”

“Truer words were never spoken,” Morgana mutters with good humor, then turns toward home with her basket in her hand and her daughter on her hip, Mordred tracing her steps behind her.


	5. 4. “A dignified and commodious sacrament” – Arthur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> King Urien, Morgana's betrothed, once broke a woman's jaw for talking back to him.

Merlin actually knocks before entering Arthur’s chambers, and when he slips inside and closes the door behind him, his eyes are downcast.

“Gwen told me some interesting things,” he says, without waiting for a greeting. “She told me about how King Urien got his cousin’s maidservant with child—” Arthur is about to protest that many highborn men have mistresses—

“—and when he found out, the king threw her down the stairs, so she’d lose the child,” Merlin finishes, looking up at Arthur with pleading eyes. “She—she broke her neck and died, Arthur.”

Arthur closes his eyes and curses softly.

“He once broke a serving girl’s jaw for talking back to him, Arthur,” Merlin says urgently. “For _talking back_. Arthur, Morgana would—”

“I know,” Arthur interrupts. “I know, Merlin.” He stands, and paces over to the window. “I had heard rumors—but I did not know it was so bad.”

“Please, Arthur… there’s got to be something you can do.”

Arthur shakes his head, exhausted already. “Every time I attempt to intercede with my father on someone’s behalf, I only inflame his rage further—”

“Then something else,” Merlin says desperately.

“What?” Arthur asks, and Merlin looks away.

“I don’t know,” he admits. After a moment, he says slowly. “I know Morgana has come to you before, to plead with you on Gwen’s behalf, on mine—sometimes for total strangers. I don’t—I don’t know everything you talk about, but I would bet that, in all that time, she’s never asked you for anything for herself. I don’t think she could.”

“She is very proud.”

Merlin nods. “She’ll make someone a great Queen, someday. Just, not this… this man,” he says, before slipping out as quietly as he came.

Arthur thinks on Merlin’s words, turning an idea over and over in his head.

 

~*~

 

“Arthur,” Morgana says, with something like relief, opening the door wider and motioning for him to enter.

He nods. “Morgana.” Arthur looks around the room until his eyes settle on the gown that is laid out on the bed for tonight’s feast.

He begins, “There is… something. A way, perhaps.” Morgana’s heart beats faster. “It would require some sacrifice. On your part, and on mine.”

“I am willing to do whatever is necessary,” she says, stepping closer to him – usually, she can read him like a book, but he’s keeping his cards well hidden right now.

“And it would require you to allow some… liberties. With your… person.”

“Arthur,” Morgana starts, impatient and frightened and absolutely unwilling to admit to any of it, “I can think of nothing I want more in this or any lifetime than for you to stop dancing around whatever this is, and tell me what is in your mind.”

“It is a delicate matter.” He’s still not looking at her. “King Urien will come to claim you in six months time.”

Morgana shivers. “Yes.”

“There is much that can happen in six months,” he says. “Conditions… that could make it impossible for you to marry Urien, or any other man that my father may select for you. Conditions that might make… visible… your unsuitability for—”

Morgana’s mind pieces together Arthur’s implications, and she suddenly remembers her vision of a month ago, the vision that she had told Merlin of, but had not understood.

“With child,” she breathes, and Arthur freezes, then nods stiffly. “You mean that he would not have me, if I were carrying another man’s child – indeed, perhaps married to that man, if he would come forward and claim it.” Another thought occurs to her, and her eyes widen. “Arthur,” she says, with carefully controlled panic, “he would _kill_ me! To say nothing of whatever poor man I could coerce into this scheme – if you think for one moment that Uther would not have the man’s head on the block within—”

“I do not think my father would have me executed,” Arthur says quietly.

Silence falls in the room, and Morgana slowly sinks into a chair, staring at Arthur.

“There was a time,” Arthur says, aiming for a lighthearted tone and missing it almost entirely, “when my father had high hopes of a match between us.”

“You mean, before it became quite obvious that we can’t stand each other,” Morgana says, with a tiny smile, and the look that Arthur gives her is grateful.

“Quite so.”

They look at each other quietly for a moment, as seriousness creeps back into the lines of Arthur’s face.

“I imagine it would be best not to tell Uther about my… condition… until it is too obvious to hide. There are more ways to make a woman lose a child than merely throwing her down the stairs,” Morgana says, with a trace of bitterness, and Arthur flinches.

“Yes,” he agrees, quietly. “When he confronts you about it, you need only tell him that I am responsible. When he summons me, I will agree, and insist that we be married.”

“Thank you,” Morgana says softly, rising to put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. He looks away.

“It is not, of course, necessary,” he says stiffly, “that I be the child’s father in truth, if there is another man whom—I mean to say that you need not… lie with me, if the prospect displeases you, or—”

Morgana studies Arthur’s face with something not unlike wonder. She muses aloud, “You would bind yourself to me, destroying forever any hope that you might have of a love marriage, and raise another man’s child as your own, with full knowledge that it is almost certain that I will mock, belittle, and provoke you for the rest of your life?”

“I have not given up hope that eventually you will be won over by my many excellent qualities and treat me with a worshipful deference—” Arthur declares; Morgana snorts. “—but, yes, in summation, that is correct,” he finishes awkwardly. “In my head, it sounded very noble.”

It is very noble. Morgana raises her hand and, with one finger, traces the strong line of his jaw, the slope of his nose, and the soft, silky skin under his eyes.

“Listen to me carefully, Prince Arthur Pendragon,” she says quietly, “for I doubt I shall ever say this again until the day I die, but…” Morgana sighs. “You are a good man, and within you are the makings of a great man. You are a boor, and an idiot, and a very great arse, but you are also a true friend, a true knight, and—” Morgana blushes. “—and if what the chambermaids say is true, a very talented bed partner.”

“How do you know what the chambermaids say?” Arthur demands.

Morgana glares. “_Listen_. You are…” She takes a breath in, lets it out, and tries again. “I have no doubt that there are many men in Camelot who would be happy to warm my bed for a night and ask no questions, but I do not want them. I do not… trust them.” Very slowly, she looks up at Arthur, and brings their mouths together for a kiss. It is brief and chaste – almost like a child’s kiss, but Arthur’s eyes close, and he strokes a hand down her arm as she steps away.

“Will you… return tonight? After the feast?” Morgana asks, irrationally nervous.

Bending over her hand like a perfect courtly gentleman, Arthur says, “It would be my honor, my lady.”

 

~*~

 

“Morgana.” Uther’s face is grave. “I had hoped that the rumors were merely rumors, but I can see the evidence with my own eyes. You are with child.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Despite my express order that you are to marry the king of Gore,” Uther begins, “You have gone against my wishes and humiliated me in front of this court and all of the—”

“Forgive me, Father,” Arthur calls, stepping forward from the side of the audience chamber, his face contrite.

“You, Arthur?” Uther asks, looking amazed.

“Yes, Father,” Arthur sighs. “I beg your forgiveness. I knew that Morgana was promised to Urien, but when I discovered that, for all these years, her disdainful and shrewish behavior toward me has only been a futile attempt to conceal her overwhelming attraction to me, I was overcome by my own love for her – which I had for so long believed to be hopeless – and succumbed to my emotions, in spite of my better judgment. Father, the fault is entirely mine – I should have been strong enough to resist, but in the face of such sincere and deeply felt affection, I was powerless. If one of us is to be punished, it should be me, Father,” Arthur concludes, with wide and guileless eyes.

Uther turns to Morgana. “Is this true, Morgana?”

“It is, my lord,” Morgana says, appearing to be suffering from some sort of affliction of the muscles of the face. “Every word of it, exactly as Arthur has said.”

“But this is wonderful news!” Uther cries. “You both know that I have long hoped for this day! An alliance with Gore would have given me great peace of mind – but there can be no peace of mind greater than to know that both of my children are happy at last. You shall be married before the week is out.”

Afterward, Arthur attempts to keep up with Morgana as she strides purposefully along the halls to her chamber.

“Morgana?” he tries. She ignores him.

She throws open the door of her chamber as if at the head of an invading army. Slamming the door behind them with a loud bang, she narrows her eyes at him.

“You. Are. Dead,” she informs him, unhooking her cloak with savage motions.

“Now, now, Morgana,” Arthur says, attempting a soothing tone which is ruined somewhat by his shit-eating grin.

“Dead.” Her hands make quick work of Arthur’s jacket and start on his tunic.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Arthur tries, lifting his arms to pull his shirt off, and balancing on one leg while he unlaces his left boot.

“Not. That. Bad?” Morgana repeats, giving him a murderous look. “That was—” She pauses to strip off her outer gown. “—the most bilious piece of utter and complete nonsense I have ever heard in my entire life!” She tosses her shoes in the opposite corner of the room and begins unlacing her bodice. “It was all I could do not to laugh in your face – or throw something at you!”

“I think that would have rather ruined the effect,” Arthur muses, unlacing his breeches.

Morgana glares. “You are unbearable.”

“You know,” Arthur remarks, with an extremely unconvincing thoughtful look, “You are most certainly with child now – technically, there’s no reason for us to continue to do this…”

“Shut up and make yourself useful,” Morgana snaps, placing one elegant hand in the center of his chest and pushing him flat on the bed.

“Chambermaids not far wrong then?” he jokes, wearing an extremely smug smile and nothing else.

Morgana’s eyes narrow once again, and she pins him to the bed with her body, her face inches from his own. “No more chambermaids,” she says, in a tone that brooks no argument. “Ever. Again.”

“What chambermaids?” Arthur murmurs, running a hand softly down her side to rest against her belly as he kisses her.

“That’s right,” Morgana says vindictively, as Arthur crawls down the bed and proceeds to make himself very useful indeed.

 

~*~

 

For five hours, Morgana has had great patience with the midwife’s firm conviction that men have no place in the birthing chamber.

That patience has come to an end.

“Get Arthur in here, _right now_,” she orders, “this is _his bloody fault_, and he should bloody well have to suffer with me!”

“My lady, men are not allowed—”

“Look deep into my eyes,” Morgana says to the midwife in a low, dangerous voice, between groans. “Do I look to you like a woman who cares what is _allowed_?”

“It is improper—”

“He’s my husband!” Morgana shouts. “I promise you, he’s seen it all before, many times!”        

The midwife just stands there, frozen and scandalized, and Morgana huffs and calls, “Gwen!”

“Yes, my lady,” Gwen says, appearing at her bedside as if by magic.

“Get Arthur in here _immediately_. Also, get rid of this useless woman and fetch Gaius – I confess I don’t know how much he knows about birthing children, but at least I know he won’t whine at me about ‘proper’ and ‘improper.’”

Gwen appears to be struggling not to smile. “As you say, my lady. Should I perhaps… fetch the servants’ midwife? I have always found her to be a very… sensible woman.”

Morgana waves an exhausted hand. “Whatever you think is best, Gwen.”

Soon Morgana’s bedchamber is packed with people – the servants’ midwife (indeed very no-nonsense) and her assistant, Gaius and Merlin, Gwen, and, finally, Arthur.

“Good Lord, it looks like you’re dying!” he exclaims when he opens the door and sees her on the bed. Merlin punches him on the arm and mutters, “You can’t say that!”

“Thank you, Merlin,” Morgana says regally.

Over the next three hours, Morgana holds Arthur’s hand steadily tighter and tighter, but he never complains. He directs the various personnel as if Morgana’s labor is a military campaign, which is almost certainly more for his benefit than hers, because every time he runs out of things to order people to do, he looks down at her face with such worry that Morgana fears he might break under it.

“You will be well,” he orders her, as if she is an inexperienced general on the eve of battle, “and the baby will be well. That is the only acceptable outcome! Steel yourselves, men!”

Merlin and Gaius, the only other men in the room, look at each other dubiously.

In the end, with the prince of Camelot, the Court Physician, the most powerful sorcerer in all Albion, her best friend, the castle midwife, and a young kitchen helper named Aliss (deputized as the midwife’s assistant) screaming “Push!” at her, Morgana delivers a healthy baby boy, whom she names Ywain. He is quite a large baby, as these things go, which Morgana blames entirely on Arthur.

After the midwife washes the little boy and bundles him up and deposits him in Morgana’s arms, Arthur orders the birthing army to retreat, and joins Morgana on the bed, curled around little Ywain. He stares at them both for a long minute, then suddenly holds Morgana very tightly, breathing unevenly into her hair and hiding his face – if Morgana didn’t know better, she might think he was weeping.

Eventually he pulls back and begins to play with Ywain’s tiny hands. Quietly, he says, “My mother… died giving birth to me,” and Morgana understands.

“I am well,” she assures him gently. “And your son is well. By his screaming and yelling, I think he takes after his father most handsomely.”

“By his complaining,” Arthur mutters, “I find he most resembles you.”

Morgana smiles and draws a slow hand down Arthur’s jaw until he returns her smile. She says softly, “By his blue eyes, I find he makes me think of you.”

Arthur looks down ruefully at Ywain, who has wrapped his little fingers around Arthur’s ring finger and does not seem keen to let go.

“By his strength,” he murmurs, “I know him to be yours.”

“Flattery does not become you,” Morgana says, but she is pleased.

“I will leave you to rest – I know that you are tired.” Arthur rises from the bed, with a final kiss each for his wife and his son. As he reaches the door, he turns back for a moment, and says slowly, his voice shaking with emotion, “I count myself… a most fortunate man this day.”

He closes the door quietly behind him when he goes.

 

~*~

 

Someone knocks on the door, and when Gwen opens it, Uther steps inside. He turns to Gwen and says politely, “Guinevere, may I speak to your mistress alone?”

Gwen curtsies and steps outside.

Uther walks up to the side of Morgana’s bed, then sits down on it, looking down at Ywain in her arms.

“He’s a beautiful child,” the king remarks, smiling.

“Thank you, my lord,” Morgana replies, returning his smile. “He takes after his mother,” she adds with a bit of a smirk – Uther laughs.

“Indeed,” he says. Slowly, the amusement leeches out of his face. Abruptly, he says, “A messenger came from Gore today.”

“Oh?” Morgana says, wary.

“King Urien is dead,” Uther announces, and Morgana struggles not to react. “You know that he married elsewhere, shortly after we broke his engagement with you.”

“I did know that, my lord.”

Uther looks old, and tired. “His new wife’s brother challenged him to a duel, in retaliation for ‘insults to her person and her honor,’ and put his sword through Urien’s throat.” He sighs, and looks away. “Now Urien’s wife is Queen of Gore, so that is something. But they say she is permanently disfigured now.”

He looks back at Morgana’s face, and his eyes are knowing.

“You and Arthur did not suddenly fall in love, did you?”

Morgana studies his face, but he does not look angry, merely resigned.

“No, my lord,” she murmurs.

He nods, as if that is what he was expecting.

“There is a boon that I would ask of you, Morgana,” he says, meeting her gaze steadily.   

“Anything, my lord,” she promises him, and he smiles.

“You know that I have always thought of you as a daughter,” he begins, “but I have not said as often as I should how much more you have been to me. You are… one of my most trusted advisors. You challenge me, question me, force me to rule from a place of reason, rather than unthinking prejudice. You have kept me honest, and without you, I think this kingdom would be a poorer place.”

He reaches out a hand, and strokes the sleeping Ywain’s soft cheek, brushing her hand on the way.

“I am dying, Morgana,” he says, and when she gasps, he holds up a hand. “It is certain. There is a growth in my lungs that will continue to grow until it takes my life, and there is no remedy. Gaius tells me I have a year to live, perhaps a little more.”

“I am so sorry, my lord,” Morgana says, and she is. In many ways, Uther has been a terrible king – he says now that he values her counsel, but she will never forget the days he kept her chained in the dungeon for speaking her mind – but he has become something close to a father to her, and among all the many and conflicted emotions she feels for him, there is love.

“Soon, Arthur will be King, and you shall be his Queen. All I wish to ask of you, Morgana is this: be for him what you have been for me,” he says urgently.  “He will need someone who will not merely tell him what he wants to hear – someone who will challenge him as you have challenged me, force him to explain himself and justify his decisions.”

“My lord,” Morgana replies with perfect honesty, “I cannot possibly imagine it any other way.”

And so, a year later, when the Queen of Gore comes before King Arthur, her bearing proud even as the court stares openly at the scar that drags down the corner of her mouth in a permanent frown and misses her left eye by only a needle’s width, Morgana knows that Camelot will offer her the aid that she seeks against Mercia’s incursions. Although the cost is great, in men and gold, Morgana has perfect confidence that the king will do what is just and noble. Her husband is a good, brave, and caring man, and those virtues rarely fail him. When they do – that is when he needs his Queen most.

“You know,” Morgana reflects, returning to the bedroom after finally settling their rambunctious little son in bed for his nap, “if it wouldn’t give you such an unbearably swelled head to hear it, I might tell you that… I love you,” she finishes softly, watching Arthur to see how he takes it.

He looks smug for a moment, then uncomfortable, then mumbles, “And if it wouldn’t give you such an inflated sense of your own importance, I might say that I… feel the same way.”

“So it’s just as well that you’re an arrogant prat,” Morgana begins, and Arthur adds, “And it’s just as well that you’re an unendurable shrew—”

“Because otherwise,” Morgana finishes, meeting his eyes with far too soft a smile, “we might be in love.”

“And that would obviously be ridiculous.”

“Obviously,” says Morgana, gravely.

“Yes,” Arthur agrees, and when their mouths meet, one of them is laughing.


	6. 5. “Love is itself unmoving” – Gwen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She thought they wanted a ransom, but all they wanted was to hurt Arthur through her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING for graphic on-screen depiction of the aftermath of off-screen rape.

Arthur rides at the head of a party of ten soldiers, with Merlin a quiet, worried presence by his side. When he sees the white, crumpled thing on the ground, at first he thinks it is Morgana’s shift, discarded on the rocks. When it moans, Arthur throws himself from his horse, and calls, “A cloak, anyone, does anyone—”

Gawaine holds out his own blood-red cloak, and Arthur takes it, shouting, “Turn away, all of you, turn your backs!” because he knows that it would kill his proud sister to realize that any man had seen her like this. She is stripped bare, and her long, white limbs are scraped and bruised and flung about her as if she were a doll dropped on the floor by a spoiled child. Arthur drapes the red cloak over her gently – she twitches when his shadow falls across her face.

Arthur feels a presence come up behind him and he turns to snarl at whoever disregarded his order, but it’s only Merlin, untying that awful red neckerchief he wears and bending to wrap it carefully around Morgana’s swollen left ankle, peeking out from beneath the cloak.

Suddenly, Morgana comes awake with a great gasp – when she sees Arthur, she flinches and tries to crawl away on her elbows, but Merlin, showing gifts Arthur did not know he possessed, crouches down and holds his empty hands out, unthreatening. He says softly, “It’s just me, Morgana. Just Merlin. I wouldn’t hurt you.” When she pauses, looking at him more closely, he tries to smile, and it manages to be comforting. Arthur knows his own attempt would be merely ghastly.

Some sense comes into Morgana’s eyes, gradually, and she looks up at Arthur, and calls his name in a small voice that it hurts to hear. He kneels down by her side and takes her hand.

“Anything you ask of me,” he vows, his voice shaking, “I will do. Anything that you need, I will give. I swear to it. Ask me anything.”

“Arthur,” she cries. “It hurts. I hurt.” Tears are running down her cheeks. Arthur does not know what to do. He repeats his vow, hoping desperately that she will ask him for something, anything, so that he will not feel so useless. But all she says is, “It hurts, Arthur.”

Merlin taps him on the shoulder – when he looks up, he sees Merlin shivering in the cold, offering his shirt.

“For Lady Morgana,” he explains. “I’ll get a blanket for a sort of a skirt.”

“Thank you,” Morgana says, attempting to recover some dignity. She shrugs off the cloak, and before Arthur can turn around to provide her with some privacy, he catches a glimpse of streaks of red blood staining her thighs. His hands clench around his sword hilt.

She walks around to face him, in Merlin’s red tunic, and a brown blanket wrapped around her waist. Her eyes are like bruises.

“You’ll ride with me,” he says, but she looks away and says, “I would… if I could ride with Merlin…”

“Of course,” Arthur says. As she turns to walk toward Merlin’s horse, Arthur gently brushes a hand against her upper arm. She looks at him and he says again, “Anything. Ask me for anything.”

“I will not forget,” she says. “But… not now.”

“Of course,” Arthur repeats.

 

~*~

 

On the ride back to Camelot, Morgana leans back into Merlin’s warmth, into the one red cloak that covers them both.

“I thought they would ask for a ransom,” she says, so quietly he can barely hear her.

“We thought the same,” Merlin replies, equally quietly.

“But they only wanted to see me suffer. Because it would hurt Uther, and Arthur.” Her voice is dead and empty. Merlin can hardly bear it.

“I’m so sorry,” is all he can think to say.

“Merlin. Do you remember that dream I told you about?”

For a moment, Merlin cannot imagine what she is talking about. When he remembers, he shakes his head and says blindly, “No. No, that’s not—this isn’t—“

“It is,” she says. “I am. I don’t know—I—” Her face stays dry, but Merlin can feel her body shake with sobs against his. Her hair is gritty and tangled against his face.

 

~*~

 

“Arthur.”

Morgana is standing in his chamber – she looks brittle, but that is no change. She has looked as if she is on the edge of shaking apart for the past week.

“You’ve heard, then,” Arthur says, looking away as he begins divesting himself of his armor.

“That Uther is marrying me off to some backwater lord too powerless to complain that his wife is damaged goods? Yes. I have heard that. Or that, for all his vaunted protestations of revenge, the king is calling off the search for the men who abducted me, after no more than a week? Yes, Arthur. I have heard that, too.”

Arthur, had, of course, argued with his father about both of those decisions. It had been as successful as Arthur’s attempts to argue with his father always are.

“Morgana—” Arthur begins, heart heavy, but she interrupts him, stepping closer, eyes desperate.

“You swore. You swore that I could ask you one thing, and you would not deny me. Anything.”

“I did,” Arthur affirms, and he will hold to that, whatever it costs him.

“Then get me away from here,” she tells him urgently, and Arthur has to blink away surprise, because that is not what he had expected her to ask. “Please. I cannot bear the way they look at me now, even the servants, and I cannot bear Uther’s—“ She scoffs, and clenches her hands. “He does not know what to do with me. I am not what he wants me to be anymore. Please, if you care for me, then get me a horse and some food and money, and get me past the guards, and I will not look back. Just let me go away from here, alone. I am… with child.” Arthur reels, shocked, but she holds up a hand. “Do not ask how I know. I know that some part of you has guessed what I am. I will not stay here to watch the ladies of the court sneer at my big belly and _pity_ me.”

Arthur takes her hand and meets her eyes, and says, “I swear to do all that you have asked of me… with one exception.” Her eyes turn betrayed, but he says gently, “I will get you out of here, with horses and whatever else you might need, to make your new life, for you and your child. But not alone. That, I cannot in good conscience do. Besides, I think Guinevere would never forgive me.”

And so it is with Gwen by her side that Morgana rides out of Camelot for the last time, under cover of darkness, with saddlebags bulging with food and clothes and whatever gold Arthur could acquire at short notice.

When they stop for the night beneath a great oak tree, Morgana forces herself to say, “We are not too far from Camelot. You could easily return. I know it is your home, I know that this is not what you hoped for, you must not feel as if you have to—” For there are many things Morgana curses, but the timing is among the worst – she had been so careful, they both had been, so slow and deliberate in their hesitant touches, their first stolen kiss, just a week before Morgana was taken, and there are things that Gwen might have expected that may never come now—

“Morgana,” Gwen says firmly, as if Morgana is speaking nonsense. “No. I am where I want to be.”

“There are things I cannot promise,” Morgana tries to explain, struggling to speak for the first time about things that they had only discussed in glances, or not at all. “I cannot return to the way things were, not yet, and perhaps never, and I do not want you to feel that you must wait on—”

“Morgana.” Slowly, but not deferentially, Gwen reaches for Morgana’s hand and clasps it between her own, rougher hands. She brings it to her lips and lays a soft kiss in the palm. “There is nowhere I had rather be than by your side. _Nowhere_.”

“Oh,” Morgana says. “And Arthur… I thought that between you, there might be—”

“There is nowhere I would rather be – no one I would rather be with,” Gwen repeats. “I will say it as many times as I must until you believe me.”

“And you will still bring me flowers?” Morgana whispers, watching the light of their little fire paint Gwen’s beautiful, gentle face in welcoming gold and orange.

“Always.”

 

~*~

 

“Thank you both so much,” Gwen says to the innkeeper’s daughter and the midwife, pressing coins into their hands.

“The most important thing is that she rests,” the midwife says firmly. “For a week, if you can manage it.”

Gwen looks at the innkeeper’s daughter, who nods.

“You’re paid up for nine days, and meals, too.”

“Thank you,” Gwen says again, and returns to their room, closing the door behind her.

Morgana has fallen asleep, the little baby boy still curled up in her arms.

Gwen gently lifts the swaddled child out of Morgana’s arms, and settles in on the window sill, bouncing the baby gently and drinking in his wide-eyed gaze.

“I’m Gwen,” she says quietly, smiling. “I don’t know your name yet, so we can’t be properly introduced. Your mother will have to tell me, when she wakes up.”

She looks up, across the room, at Morgana, who looks exhausted even in sleep – it was a long and difficult labor.

“That’s your mother,” Gwen explains. “She was the first face you ever saw. You look… you look just like her. I mean,” Gwen says, flustered, “I know most babies have blue eyes, I don’t know if that will—but you really do look so much like her,” she finishes softly.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t,” Gwen confesses, holding the baby a little more tightly. “I was afraid you wouldn’t look anything like her – that you’d look like… that you’d look like the men—” She breaks off, and breathes deeply, pulling her calm back on like a warm cloak. “But it doesn’t matter,” she says firmly. “I would have loved you anyway, no matter what you looked like. We both would have.”

The little boy makes a sort of a cooing noise, and wiggles a little in her arms, making her laugh and rock him back and forth, shushing him.

“You mother worked very hard,” she says in a mock-stern voice, shaking her finger at him. “She’s allowed to have her rest. And you should sleep, too, soon. I could sing you a lullaby, if you like.”

Gwen strokes her finger gently down the baby’s cheek, and feels a warm swell of tenderness. “It was me, you know,” she says impulsively, “who sang to you, all those nights when you were… well, when you were still growing.    Morgana’s voice…” Gwen laughs. “Morgana’s singing voice is not fit for children, let’s say. Actually—” Her voice drops down to a whisper. “—it’s not fit for anybody! But you can’t tell her I told you that.” She giggles, and the child waves his hands at her.

“I suppose most people would feel silly, talking to a baby like this. But my father always talked to me, even when I was little – even when I was as little as you, the neighbors say. I wish… I wish he could have known about you,” she whispers, and her eyes fill. “Oh, he would have _loved_ you. He would have been so happy. He loved babies. This great big man with these rough, smith’s hands, holding the weaver’s new baby girl – I’ll never forget that.” Gwen bounces the baby some more and tries not to cry – it has been a long and exhausting day for her, too.

Morgana’s voice, rough with weariness says, “I thought, for a name—I thought, perhaps, Tom.”

“You’re awake?” Gwen walks over to the bed, where Morgana is indeed awake, looking slightly guilty.

“You were awake that whole time,” Gwen guesses, her voice reproving. “You were listening to me! Morgana, I cannot believe you.”

“I _was_ asleep, at first,” Morgana protests. “I woke from a dream.”

A chill runs down Gwen’s back. “What kind of a dream?”

Morgana reaches out one shaking hand and pulls her fiercely down into a kiss. “A good dream,” she whispers passionately, “Oh, Gwen, such a dream.” She holds out her arms and Gwen silently places her little boy into them. His eyes are drooping, and it seems as if he is finally close to sleep.

Gwen climbs onto the bed and stretches out along Morgana’s side, where she contemplates joining the little boy in his nap.

“You should sleep, Gwen,” Morgana murmurs, echoing Gwen’s thoughts. Gently she guides Gwen’s head down to her shoulder, and strokes Gwen’s hair soothingly.

“What kind of good dream?” Gwen asks muzzily, slipping into sleep.

“Peace,” Morgana says simply. “Someday.”

Gwen closes her eyes and falls into the quiet.

 

~*~

 

Five years later, a messenger comes to a small town across the border in Mercia, looking for two women and a child. When he describes these women, the villagers realize that he must be looking for Morgana, the village witch who mends broken bones and can make tired soil fruitful once more, and her companion Gwen, the lady smith. The village headman scowls, wary – when the women came, five years ago, it was plain to all that they were running from something. Since then, they’ve brought much good fortune to this little village, and the people are fond of them. If this messenger means them harm, he will not meet with a good welcome.

Watchful, the headman escorts the messenger to the door of the cottage next to the smithy. The messenger knocks, and the door opens to reveal the witch, smiling brightly. A white flower is braided loosely into her dark hair. She says warmly, “Merlin. I saw that you would come,” and embraces him.

Morgana invites Merlin inside the cottage – her homespun dress is clean, but its raggedness tells him that its wearer has better things to do from dawn to dusk than fuss with her appearance. Her hands are strong and rough with hard work. Within is Gwen, and she, too, embraces him.

“I come bearing a message from King Arthur,” he says, and Morgana and Gwen share a glance.

“King Arthur,” Gwen repeats, lingering over the first word. “This is welcome news indeed. We had not heard, so far here from the city.”

“The King very much desires the ladies Morgana and Guinevere to return to Camelot,” Merlin recites. He adds, with a self-deprecating smile, “As does his lowly messenger… and his newly-appointed Court Sorcerer.”

“Court Sorcerer?” Morgana tastes the words in her mouth. “I think—“

A young boy dashes into the room, his face smeared grey with ash from the forge. He pauses and looks up at Merlin.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“I’m Merlin. What’s your name?”

“Tom.”

Merlin smiles, and it wears an edge of sadness. “Tom. That’s a very good name. Tom, would you like to see Camelot?”

Tom cocks his head to one side and considers this.

“Will there be knights?”

“Oh, yes,” Merlin promises gravely. “Many, many knights.”

“And a king?”

“The best king of them all,” Merlin says, proudly, without a trace of doubt. “The best king there will ever be.”

Tom considers further. He is a thoughtful child, and a bit magic himself.

“I would like to see the knights,” he declares. “And the king.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” Merlin replies with a grin. “As the king would very much like to see you, too.” He looks up, to Tom’s mothers, and his eyes hold a question.

This should be more difficult, but Morgana is not the young and broken woman who had feared the poisonous glances of the court, and stood to lose her freedom and perhaps her very life. With Gwen, and for Tom, Morgana has become stronger than she ever knew. There is little that she fears anymore.

She turns to Gwen. “I want to return,” she says hesitantly, “but I know you love this place, that you—I would not take you away from—”

Gwen takes her hand, and says again with absolute certainty, “There is nowhere I would rather be than by your side. Nowhere.”

The court had pitied Morgana, five years ago. No doubt some of them still will, but Morgana, now and for many years, counts herself the luckiest woman in the world.

“To Camelot,” she says, and Merlin smiles, and Gwen holds her hand a little tighter, and Tom jumps up and down, and Morgana begins to prepare for a future she had never dreamed.


End file.
